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Castell to take reins at Wellcome

SIR WILLIAM CASTELL, who is to retire next year as the chief executive of GE Healthcare, is expected to become the next chairman of The Wellcome Trust, Britain’s wealthiest medical-research charity. He will replace Sir Dominic Cadbury, who recently turned 65.

The Wellcome Trust spends about £400m a year on funding biomedical research, much of it important academic work that has no immediate application. Through the Sanger Institute near Cambridge, it was one of the leading contributors to the worldwide effort to decode the human genome.

Castell is a passionate enthusiast for the potential of personalised medicine, tailored to an individual’s genetic dispositions. He is also one of Britain’s most successful industrialists, having turned Amersham from a small company based around radiotherapy to one that was worth £5.7 billion when it was taken over by General Electric last year.